


the thing that isn't a thing but might on the other hand be a thing

by ByJuniper



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ByJuniper/pseuds/ByJuniper
Summary: The conventions of horror stories and love stories are both all about the mounting dread. Also, Ryan was sure the Airbnb he booked said it had two beds.





	the thing that isn't a thing but might on the other hand be a thing

The thing that’s happening now, it’s not, you know--it's not a _thing_. Like as far as big deals go? This? Isn't one of them. It's just like. You know. It's just a thing. It's a thing friends do. When they have to. It's a thing that friends do with their friends. It's fine. It's super fine. It's not even like a big deal. If Ryan told anyone what they were doing, they'd be like, "Ryan! That's not even a big deal! Why are you so sweaty." He's sweaty because of how not a big deal it is. This is what he looks like when he's casual. He couldn't be more--

_it's not sex._

It's not sex, the thing, the thing that's just a thing and not even really a thing, it's not sex. It might sound like sex, the way he's thinking, but it is not sex. In fact, the degree to which it's not sex should highlight how much this isn't a thing, and in fact this isn't even on the spectrum of sex. This is in a different room than sex. Sex is apples and this is a concrete cube. Ryan gets that this might sound like sex, but it's not sex, and no one should think it's sex and no one would think it's sex because it's so much not like sex that Ryan isn't even sure why he's denying it, like hahaha silly Ryan, why would you even. Why would. Why would you think that. Why, Ryan. Why did you think that.

"Dude," says Shane, but muffled because his mouth is full of Ryan's hair.

The thing is that they’re sharing a bed.

"Shut up, Shane," says Ryan, but muffled as well because he's so thoroughly smashed up against the wall of this very misleadingly advertised Airbnb which promised two beds and also heating and also that it would not smell like cat piss or make Ryan have a panic attack at three in the morning. (Those last promises were implicit in the listing because who would want those things, but hey, maybe Ryan’s been wrong this whole time and those are details that have to be explicit) And not that this is panic. Because there's no reason to panic. But if it was panic, it wouldn't be fair because this isn't even a haunted house. There just aren't a lot of hotels in this particular stretch of rural Vermont. The Airbnb seemed like a nice alternative. They could stay here one night and then go see some murder sites in the morning. Even the murder sites probably aren't haunted. It's True Crime season. Ryan thought it might be nice to travel more for True Crime. Because, you see, of the break from ghosts. So he isn't nervous because he has no reason to be nervous because there's nothing to be nervous about, either at the murder sites (stop calling them murder sites) or at this Airbnb, which is also not haunted and no one is here except Ryan and Shane, just Shane and Ryan and no one else here, because it's just the two of them and one bed and that's fine. It's as fine as the bed is small, which is to say _very._

Shane shifts behind him and suddenly Ryan's cold again. That's a novel experience. He hasn't felt cold since Shane curled up against him, and that was about an eternity ago. (Ryan checks his watch.) That was exactly twenty-seven minutes ago. He squints over his shoulder. Shane's propped himself up on an elbow and looks back. He doesn't have his glasses on, so it's anyone's guess how much he's seeing in the crisp silver moonlight that comes through the room's massive and uncurtained window. He probably can't see anything. Except Shane's near-sighted so actually he's probably seeing a lot. Because Shane's near. He's right there in this comically small single bed, and even after he's pulled away, he's still so very close. It's a small bed and there's only one of them. Ryan's going to leave a very stern review in the morning.

"You seem nervous," Shane says from up above Ryan. Not from very much above Ryan, but enough that one of them is very much lying in bed and the other is very much looming.

"You're letting the heat out," Ryan says. This is true. The room with only one bed is, as will be mentioned in all caps in Ryan's review, cold as all shit. It's about the same as being out in the snow, except out there you could die of hypothermia with a little bit of dignity. Here, it's just the two of them. Ryan, squinting. Shane, looming.

"I can feel your heart," Shane says, which makes Ryan's stomach drop for some reason. Not a good drop, but not a bad drop. Like. A roller coaster drop, maybe, but you're not sure if you buckled up.

He's felt that before with Shane. Maybe a lot. Maybe a lot a lot. But who's keeping track.

"So?" Ryan asks.

"So it's pounding. It's like spooning a hummingbird."

"We're not spooning."

Shane raises an eyebrow, inviting Ryan to elaborate on what then they are doing. Ryan can't exactly say. He hadn't gotten much further than articulating that this was just a thing. Or it wasn't a thing. Ryan isn't sure which he'd concluded. It's definitely not sex, but he doesn't think he should protest that unprompted.

"We're conserving heat," Ryan says. "Like Arctic explorers. We probably have the same chances of survival."

"It's not that cold out."

"I get it, you're Midwestern." Ryan twists back over, tugs the quilt back over him. He brings it up to his chin and ducks his face into it. It's easier with Shane sitting up, gives Ryan a little more room, but Ryan's forehead still grinds against the wallpaper as he hunkers deeper into the crack between bed and wall. He's occupying about six total inches of length. Shane's got the whole rest of the bed. "If you're not cold, you don't have to," Ryan mumbles into the quilt, which smells like dust and the platonic ideal of a grandmother. He doesn't mean to mumble it, but the words don't want to come out. He wants them to come out but he doesn't. It is very cold in this room. Shane is very warm. And it doesn't—Shane’s not—like whatever this is, Shane isn’t—he’s Shane. So Ryan's not uncomfortable. Or, he is but it's because he's probably sleeping on a mattress filled with corn husks and it is still snowing and it would probably keep snowing through the night and into tomorrow. They might not be able to film tomorrow; the crew might not be able to fly in. Ryan and Shane had gone ahead because that had seemed like a good idea somehow a week ago. Some time to prep for the episode alone.

Ryan had blushed when Shane suggested it, and Shane had blushed too. And neither one of them said anything about it, but they had smiled. Ryan remembered the small smile dwarfed by the rest of Shane’s massive head, and how Shane had tried to smooth it away while he turned back to his computer and ordered their tickets, but the smile kept coming back. Like whenever he forgot for a moment not to smile, he smiled.

He’d caught Ryan staring and that was when Ryan had realized that his own smile wasn’t small. It was a grin, and he didn’t know why, and it was so funny that he didn’t know why that he couldn’t help but laugh, and Shane laughed too, and Ryan didn’t know what they were laughing at, but it felt good. Ryan felt like the bubbles in champagne.

_Ryan, that simile isn’t who you are._

Ryan felt like the shaken up beer can, the keyhole already carved with his thumb pressed over it. All someone had to do was pop the tab.

Ryan shivers, and it has nothing to do with anything but the cold.

Shane says, "I can sleep on the floor."

Ryan says, "Stop being an idiot and spoon me." These words, Ryan notes with some annoyance, come out crystal clear.

Shane laughs, a little. It's a strange kind of laugh. It's not really happy or amused sounding or sarcastic or cruel. It sounds more like someone asking what they'd got themselves into. And Shane lies back down.

There's a little more space between them. Ryan's pressed a little closer to the freezing wall. Shane's holding himself a little further away. Still. There's only so much room in the bed. And the wall is very cold. And it's easy, it's so easy, to lose ground with every breath. To slide back. Ryan can’t hold himself stiff enough. Somehow with Shane, he never can.

It doesn't take long until they're flush again. Ryan's back against Shane's chest, and Shane's long legs shifting until they press against Ryan's. He's warm. Shane's so warm.

He'd been warm yesterday morning as well, on set but done filming and they were alone for some reason, who kept letting them be alone, and when their hands bumped together under the desk and then they just...stayed bumped. Ryan curled his pinky around Shane's. He didn't know why he'd done that. They were just hanging out together, going over the itinerary and where they’d meet up with the crew and if they’d have anytime to go sightseeing, and they'd just--it had just--Ryan didn't know. It wasn't holding hands. It was barely holding fingers. And they didn't say anything about it. They just kept talking, reading, joking, except Shane's ears and cheeks looked pink under the lights and when his glasses slipped down his nose, he didn't use his right hand to push them up. That was the hand Ryan was--that was touching Ryan's. Instead, Shane used his left hand. And Ryan remembers thinking, _that would have been his out. He could have moved his right hand away to push up his glasses, and then it would be over, and we wouldn't have talked about it. But he used his left hand._

So Ryan would have to be the one to move away. Because this wasn't anything, obviously, but it was--this wasn't what should be--it wasn't anything so it didn't matter. So Ryan moved. He moved his thumb so that it grazed that back of Shane's little finger, and Shane stuttered to a halt mid-sentence.

They weren't doing anything wrong or anything right or anything noteworthy. They weren't doing anything at all. When the door opened, they jumped apart because they'd both lost track of the time and they had meetings, yes, many meetings to go to and also editing and writing. No one had almost caught them because there'd been nothing to catch.

The two of them in this bed is like that, exactly like that, except instead of two fingers, it's practically their whole bodies, but it's the same idea only bigger. And they're both fully dressed because why wouldn't they be. Ryan's even wearing three pairs of socks. Nothing has ever happened to anyone wearing three pairs of socks.

(Two of the pairs are Shane's, who had emerged from the tarmac into the Vermont winter with the distinct smugness of people who’ve suffered the cold before and always knew they’d be asked to do so again. After he'd thoroughly made fun of Ryan's reasonable concerns of frostbite, he lent his socks to Ryan. They're too thick for Ryan to wear them with his boots tomorrow, but they sure feel good now, insomuch as Ryan can feel anything below his knees. Shane had offered--jokingly, Ryan's sure--to rub some heat back into Ryan's feet. Ryan took the socks instead and didn't think at all about the other offer, not even for a moment.)

Ryan slides his foot against Shane's calf, just to remind him that nothing is going to happen. On account of the socks. And also because nothing was ever going to happen, because there's nothing to happen. There's nothing. Shane's breath hitches when Ryan curls his foot around Shane's ankle, and it doesn't mean a thing. Shane exhales, hot and raggedy against the nape of Ryan's neck, and that's what friends do. This is what friends do. They share what they have. What they have is warmth and a single bed and the air between them.

There isn’t a lot of air between them.

Shane's so close that Ryan can feel him thinking through the tension in his frame. He feels Shane's dilemma in tic of his arm. It twitches and twitches again a minute later, like a broken second hand of a clock that just can't quite tick on to the next notch. One arm Shane has shoved under the pillow, under his head, and it can't be comfortable, but it's someplace for his arm to be. And the other arm, the twitching arm, lies straight down the side of Shane's body. His long fingers are probably tapping out Morse against his hips. Or maybe not. Because Shane can't seem to move his arm. He's trying. But he can't. Or maybe it's the other way around. He's trying very hard not to move it.

And Ryan closes his eyes.

This isn't a thing. This isn't. What's here between them, what's not between them, it isn't anything. Yet. It's the car at the top of the roller coaster. It's almost something. It could be. Or this is when someone throws the brake and says, "We shouldn't go down this, are you crazy? Someone might get hurt." Potential energy doesn’t actually have to become kinetic. You can just. Turn around. Walk back from the precipice.

In horror movies, there's always a point when the characters could have turned around, and they always go into the basement instead. Because they have to. It wouldn't be a horror movie if someone turned just around. It wouldn't be a movie at all. There's not a lot of stories written on a foundation of good sense.

And the thing is, Ryan likes horror movies. And roller coasters. He likes being scared. That's not a mystery at this point. That can't be a dramatic reveal. If he didn't, he couldn't do this. He wouldn't do this.

And maybe _this_ means the show, the stomping around murder sites and ghoul haunts and hell holes and the site of every nasty legend that can make Ryan shiver the first time he reads it. And maybe _this_ means going all in on the show, on the network, on the idea that success will beget more success, and that good things won't end, and he was right to keep hustling and filming and editing and writing and pitching and guesting in shoots that take the kind of dumb shit his frat did at rush and turns them into five minute videos that use his face in the thumbnail because analytics say that people like his face. They like his face and Shane's face. They like when they share the same space.

And maybe _this_ means that, means all of that up above, but maybe it also means that the fourth time Shane's arm twitches and stays right where it is, Ryan rolls over. And he slides his arm under Shane's arm, which is now as rigid as the rest of him, and Ryan snakes his arm around Shane's waist. And pulls him closer. Pulls him the closest he can.

The only reason Ryan doesn't bury his cold face in Shane's bare neck is because Shane's chest is right there. And unfortunately, it's the warmest thing Ryan has ever felt.

After a moment, Shane breathes. He breathes shallowly, as if he's not sure Ryan knows where he is. Like if Shane moves too much, Ryan will bolt. It's not a bad instinct on Ryan's part. Ryan's very much thinking about bolting. People in the basement always do.

Ryan doesn't let himself think about kissing Shane's chest. Truth be told, he probably couldn't have thought about it at all. It's not a thought. It's like one of those reflexes that in the name of speed doesn't need to go all the way up to the brain. Like when you put your hand on the stove, and the pain gets to the spinal cord before the spinal cord's like, hey, let's move that hand. Shane's chest rose just a whisper and brushed against Ryan's lips, and his lips thought, hey. Let's kiss that.

Shane couldn't even feel it through the sweater. Ryan's almost certain of that. So there's no reason for Shane to suddenly be breathless again.

And then, Shane’s arm moves. And his hand is stupidly warm against Ryan’s frozen cheek as he tilts Ryan’s face up. And Shane’s eyes in the moonlight are dark as the midnight sky. And he’s not smiling now, not even a little smile. He’s watching Ryan’s face.

The thing’s not a thing. Not yet. But also not for long.

Ryan doesn’t actually mind a good jump scare. After enough building tension, it’s such a goddamn relief for something to snap. The horrifying thrill of walking down a long dark hallway towards a closed door at the end. You don’t know what’s behind the door, but you know you don’t want to see it. But you walk anyway. And each step tunes the nerves tighter until Ryan can feel his pulse in his toes and the weight of his eyelashes and the way sweat beads in his armpit before it rolls down. And it would be a relief, it really would, for the door to just burst open. For the terror to arrive.

But also, the thing is. Ryan kinda likes the tension too. Of course he does. Of course.

Shane’s thumb brushes the edge of Ryan’s lips. And Ryan. Ryan opens his mouth.

“Oh fuck,” Shane breathes like a prayer, and now there’s no space between them, none at all, and his mouth is fire, and his hands cradle Ryan’s face like he’s cupping a flame, and Ryan claws at Shane’s hair, and Shane pushes himself between Ryan’s thighs, and the door at the end of the hallway opens, and the light in the basement goes out, and the tab of the beer can gets popped open, and the audience screams while his brothers chant _chug chug chug._ It’s here, the break, the burst, the spark and explosion simultaneously.

Ryan clings to Shane like a drowning man. And Shane surges forward to drown him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] the thing that isn't a thing but might on the other hand be a thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060948) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor)




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